Survival Tactics

In the wild, animals hide their pains, injuries, and illnesses so that they won’t be dinner for various carnivourous megafauna. As humans, we’d like to think we are different, but this is so not the case. Especially for those of us with invisible disabilities. Although we’re entitled to accommodations, we still try REALLY hard to act normal. Crazy people especially (such as moi) have to behave impeccably well to not be percieved as lacking in the skills and wherewithall to get through life. If our disability is getting obvious, or we’re starting to have a breakthrough episode, it gets really hard. It’s not so much that people care what you’re thinking or feeling, it’s that people want your behavior to not interfer with their lives. Also, if you’re in deep emotional pain, you could get passed over for that promotion, that job, that apartment, etc etc. People don’t like to be around crazy people because either a) they don’t know how to deal with a crazy person, or b) they think you’ll kill them.

Not only that, but to be publically identifiable as someone dealing with mental health issues means you’re also prey for any of the millions of human predators out there, be they sexual predators, violent predators, or even a certain dude I know who twice tried to steal my apartment and possessions and toss me into the street. You get stuck in slum housing in a rough neighborhood working a low paying job, or worse, living on the meager amounts disability pays. I think stigma plays a huge role in the fact that a large number of people with mental health issues are living on the streets or in rundown buildings.

And then you might want to survive by not telling anyone that you have an invisible disability. But what about the sick days you’ll have to take at some point when meds need to be changed? Or if you have to go to the hospital? What about that uncomfortable abusive feeling you get when someone starts talking shit about crazy people?

I’m still coming out of a depressive episode, a rather mild one really, but still totally fucked and horrid. But I only thought about suicide for one hour, and that was a new record for me. Unfortunately I did think about cutting, which is something I’ve only ever done once five years ago. I still feel pretty crummy, and I know it will be another week before I’m operating at full capacity. So I wear the happy face. Not because I am happy, or that I feel I should be happy, but just because if it looks like my episode is as bad as it really is people will get pissed off and I’ll probably get hassled a lot by people who want me to snap out of it.

It’s just a survival strategy, don’t show weakness.

Fuckin’ Epson

I’ve wasted a goodly amount of new ink trying to get the printer to work. Now I find out after googling that Epson Stylus CX5400 is NOTORIOUS for fucking up with clogged ink after three cartridge changes. This means: 1. They make more money off ink by wasting it. 2. They make more money by charging ridiculous prices to “repair” the printer. Luckily this can all be solved by a very involved cleaning (NOT “head cleaning,” I mean actually taking the thing apart and using citrus clean and a wire in the hose). Head cleaning has so far done ABSOLUTELY nothing to get the printer to print, in fact it is making it worse. All this and I have a deadline coming up to submit my screenplay to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Which means I probably will end up going over to my mom’s to print after all. So the point is, don’t buy Epson. Do research before you purchase a printer so you don’t end up with a pathetic lemon like mine.

Heavy sigh.

I got Schrodinger a huge cat “tree” today. Basically it’s a two level carpeted cat gym with a small box with round doors on the bottom. a sisal scratching post and ramp to the second floor, where a round cat bed is perched. The legs are also covered with sisal and there are SIX (kinda ridiculous) rattley balls dangling from more sisal rope. I thought he would need it so he can hide from Jago, cause I know he’ll be kinda pissed at me and especially at the dog. The surprising thing is that it only cost about 55 bucks. The funny thing is he’s nearly the same color as it.

Anyway, cripes, I gotta get to bed.

28 years old

Today is my birthday, and the first thing I did was a prat fall off my bed, reaching for the snooze button. My new kitten Schrodinger was very alarmed, especially since one side of the futon was on the floor with me, while the side he was on had catapulted him up in the air. Poor little guy.

Schrodinger just came home on Sunday, and he’s still getting used to life here. He missed his sisters and mom for the first day, but now he’s just being a regular kitten, goofing around and playing with his huge collection of toys. I can spend hours just watching his hilarious antics. He sure does cheer me up. Life already seems very different. And when the dog comes, it’s going to be even more different. He’s a really funny cat, he gets pissed off if his litter box is too dirty, he just mews and mews until I clean it.

Anyway, hmm. Every birthday I try to write what I’ve learned about life in the past year.

What have I learned?

I’ve learned that sometimes fulfilling your dreams means you have to go into a different direction than you imagined. I’ve learned a hell of a lot about writing a screenplay. I’ve learned that it’s best to be who you really are, instead of pretending to be someone other people might prefer. I’ve learned about psychiatric service dogs and what they can be trained to do to help mitigate my illness. I’ve realized that I’m a deeply spiritual person, and also that even though I firmly believe in something (ie, and afterlife, the being some call God), other people are also entitled to their own beliefs. I’ve learned a lot about living with bipolar disorder.

I hope this next year will be good. A lot of things happened when I was 27. I got my BFA. I finished the first draft of my first feature. I had a dissolute unemployed summer. I worked briefly in a homophobic office. I moved back to Saskatoon, and got my first nice apartment and decent job. I started hanging out with an old old old friend again. In all, it has been a good year.

And life will be irrevocably changed . . .

I’ve talked in the distant past about my desire for a service dog. I’ve spent hours researching and planning and scheming and thinking and more research, and it is starting to come to fruition. I’ve got the toys. I’ve got the time. I’ve got the money. And I’ve met the dog.

He’s very smart and beautiful, with a really adorable face that can change like quicksliver from mild inquisitiveness to full on friendly face with a great big smile. He’s quiet and gentle and smart as a whip. He’s housebroken and knows some commands. He’s got a sweet little pointy face and a dedicated nature. He’s a year old, which is good because little babies are a lot of work.

This is the year long plan for the young man:
1. Take him to obedience school (clicker training)
2. Start getting him acclimated to public places, people, and new situations
3. Start doing task oriented training (hopefully with the help of a qualified trainer who’s trained psychiatric service dogs)
4. Take the Canine Good Citizen Test
5. Continue on to advanced task training, alerting, more obedience, and more public spaces
6. Take him to a service dog organization to get him tested and given service dog i.d.

I’ve also considered, just for fun, to take him to agility.

You may be wondering why I want a service dog. Yeah, I take meds, yeah, I’m going to start counselling, AGAIN, but there are certain things a dog can help me with that all the rest can’t:
To alert me to oncoming episodes and get me to a safe place to deal with it.
To remind me of medication time.
To ground me when my mind starts racing by inturrupting and focusing on me.
To calm me when I get anxiety.
To alert to panic attacks.
To wake me up in the morning.
To give emotional support when I’m depressed.
To remove me from social situations when I’m overwhelmed.

And I’m sure my list of things he can do for me will grow with time. It’s going to be very different. And I know I’ll probably feel exhausted at times. But in the long run, he’s going to do so much for my quality of life. And I’m going to have to adjust to caring for a very small and important being. I know I’ll also run into obstacles, especially since Canadian law doesn’t fully protect Psychiatric Service Dogs in the same way American law does. It will be hard, getting access rights, having training difficulties, finding the PSD handler’s community, getting crapped on for having such a small service dog (Canadians still consider service dogs to be big guys, even though in the States toy breeds are also used), getting crapped on by other people with mental health issues for even having a service dog. It’s all going to be full of it’s own ups and downs.

People think service dogs always are on the job, but that’s not totally true. He’s going to be able to come home and be a regular dog, with lots of toys in all varieties and walks and playing fetch and romps in the dog park. He’s even going to be able to have occasional sleepover/vacations with certain people so he has some down time. He’ll play with other dogs and be best friends with a kittycat and get to make goofy faces and have controlled treats. He’s even going to travel with me for a month in August to Utah, Ontario, and Quebec. I’m not bringing him with me on business related trips until I’m sure he and I have a good relationship and he’s well behaved. After that, where ever I go, he’ll usually come too, helping me along across time and space!

So if you see someone in a movie theatre with a long haired black and tan mini dachshund in a “service dog in training” vest, it’s probably me.

Butch-Femme Misconceptions

Being butch, I get a lot of weird ideas about my sexual identity. One is the ever popular heterosexualized game “Who’s the boy and who’s the girl?” In bed, they mean. Like only ONE person is ever allowed to do penetration and only ONE person is allowed to be penetrated. It’s very unimaginative, and probably one of the better reasons they should stay to boring het sex.

But when you’re a shy boi who wears the pants, immediately it’s assumed that you’re the penetrator and your more girly sweetie is the one with her legs in the air. And yeah, there are a lot of butches and femmes who operate like that, and good for them. But just because some of us do that doesn’t mean we’re all like that.

I’m a bottom. That doesn’t mean I’m not into strapping it on or lubing up my fist, but for me, what really does it is some luscious femme with a big silicone boner under her skirt (or pants, or overalls, or whatever she likes to wear). Some people say this means you’re not a butch, to which I say bullshit. Masculine men and women everywhere like penetration, and I don’t think it means you have to start wearing lipstick.

What other butch misconceptions are out there? Hmm. That we’re pretend men or want to be men. Yeah, it has to be said that there are a number of butches who eventually embrace their own maleness and come out as fully fledged FTM’s. But that doesn’t mean ALL butches want to be men. A lot of us are happy in our female bodies, even as we do shop in the men’s section.

Coming out as butch was really confusing, because I think I’m so gender complicated. I tried wearing boy undawears because I thought it was expected of me, but in reality I feel way hotter wearing ridiculously feminine bras and panties. Plus boy gaunch were way too contricting around my ample girl thighs. Elaborate lacy things underneath a veneer of masculinity is HOT HOT HOT, and some of my partners have thought so too. I still remember the terrific thrill I got when a lover of mine tore off my button up shirt and found a fancy green and black lace brassiere underneath. And I remember how my femme lover was always enamoured of my pink frilly panties she would find under my jeans.

That all being said, sometimes I do like stuffing things down my pants. My favorite all time stuffer was a banana covered in a condom. As the day progressed it got mushier and mushier, until I finally threw it away, condom and all, into a garbage can at Emily Carr. I wouldn’t be surprised if a hungry art student fished it out and ate it.

Off topic: Once at Emily Carr there was a garbage sign with a label which read “This is Art, not a Garbage Can.” People threw garbage in it anyway.

One other thing I hate about butch misconceptions is that we’re traitors to the female of the species. I think we’re actually an integral part of the female experience. We’ve been on the vanguard of many political movements, and not just the queer rights movement. I hate that butch is considered an insult by some queers of my generation.

But what about femmes, you may ask?

Femme misconceptions run just as rampant, if not more so. I think the biggest complaint I’ve heard from my femme lovers has been how hard it is for them to be recognized as queers, not only by straight people, but by queer people too. I remember one time I was necking with my high femme lover in a Scotiabank ATM when some dude from ECIAD walked by. She started doing something else while I chatted with him.

“She’s not gay,” he told me, even after her tongue was down my throat right in front of him.

“No, she’s bisexual.”

“No she’s not, she’s straight.” He’d never even talked to her but because she was a femme, apparently she couldn’t like pussy.

But it happens with dykes too, ESPECIALLY if you’re lover’s bisexual. Because it’s assumed that they won’t ever consider a girl as a serious long term partner. And there are some bisexuals who lean more towards one side than the other, but you never really know what will happen when love just clicks.

I think my current favorite theorist on butches is Judith Halberstam. If you haven’t read her work you should really check it out. I’d like to read some femme theory if I can get my hands on it, but with no dedicated homo book store in S’toon, I’m open to recommendations so I can order some in.

I’ve heard the crabs screaming

It’s slowly becoming a birthday tradition for me to munch crab, drink champers, and live large, if only for one day. Because what else are birthdays for but belt popping fullness on food you’d ordinarily never eat?

I may have waxed romantic on crab dinner before, but now, out here on the prairies, with nothing more exotic than Red Lobster, a good crab dinner is hard to find. I don’t want merely frozen legs doing a chorus line on my plate, I want a whole goddamned crab, curled up in it’s own last moment of agony on my plate. I want oysters on the half shell, doing their last dance down my gullet.

I must say though, I do have a wave of regret about crab. I find it difficult to eat one if I’ve heard it screaming, which was why having a fancy restaurant kill it for you was so appetizing. They say crabs can’t scream, but I was so sure I heard it once. Maybe it was just the sound of boiling water running through it’s tiny body. Or maybe it did scream.

I recently purchased 11 dollars of snow crab legs. Frozen in a chorus line package. No screams for me.

But for my birthday, yes, we’re going to have to buy live crabs and lobsters and kill them. I don’t think I’ll be able to look!!! But I’ll definitely be able to chomp away at the wee crustaceans.

See, and this is probably the only reason I would be a vegetarian if it was the OLDEN days. No way could I chop the head off a chicken or chase a bison off a cliff. I’d be too squeamy. I’d say “um, I think I’ll just have these berries, thanks anyway,” and then they’d (the neighborhood) would all laugh at me as I got diarrea. And they’d probably be annoyed at me for eating all these berries.

(Name that comedian)
“I will hide these berries under a rock. There will be no berries, and some animals will die.”

I recently purchased crustacean cutlery. Some shell cracking instruments and some long pointy forks with wee spoon like devices on the ends of them for pulling out MEAT.

Which brings me back to vegetarians.

Now I don’t mind vegetarians, unless they start harping about my diet (dude I’m native, we FREAKIN’ love meat!) but I heard a rather disturbing rumour about vegetarians some years ago. I may even have mentioned it here. But it’s SO bizarre that it bears repeating.

I heard that vegetarians eat human placenta because it’s the only meat that doesn’t involve killing something.

Now that’s sick!

I thought it was just an urban legend, but then I asked my good friend “New Man X”, who was at the time an avowed vegan.

“We were going to eat my best friend’s placenta” she calmly replied, well, with a hint of saliva creeping out of her mouth.

It was too much, the thought of a group of vegans hungrily frying up placenta. I heard it’s a good cure for post partum depression, but ew, that’s pretty desperate.

Now that makes the screaming of the crabs sound much more tolerable. I mean, I imagine menstruel clots are pretty similar to placenta, but I wouldn’t collect them and make omelets, ya know what I mean?

The Icy Blast of the Past

I recently had the most ridiculous dream, involving my ex-one-time-lover from high school and Nicole Kidman. We were wearing top hats, sitting next to Nicole Kidman at a premiere. Nicole was going to be in a film I was making which was completely in German (I don’t speak German and I doubt Nicole does).

Now, I wasn’t as surprised to find Nicole Kidman in my dream, considering since I’ve moved to Saskatoon I’ve had celebrity cameos in my nocturnal slumbers on a fairly regular basis. But I was surprised to see Miss X (her name is unique enough that she would be justified in giving me a boot kicking for naming her), since I had thought of her only rarely in the intervening years since adolescence.

But it did give me pause for thought. For one thing, I was pretty awful as a teenager. I did a bunch of stuff I regret. Hormones are so crazy when you’re a teen, and jealousy is horrid. I was fucked up and confused and mean, and I was way too preoccupied with the advice and opinions of others. I think as I’ve matured, I’ve wanted to go back and try to make amends.

I found her email, sent a message of apology, and you know, I really have no expectations. I won’t even mind if she never emails me back, I’m just grateful that a dream pushed me towards trying to fix something that went terribly wrong. Maybe it will inspire me to be more open in future relationships.

She’s still as beautiful as when she was a teenager, and I was awkwardly crushed out. I hope that time has given me the grace to act more honorably towards those I love.

I’m shrinking!

I may have mentioned the terrible flu I got just before I moved, how I lay in bed for a week and didn’t eat, and consequently lost so much weight my pants were falling off. Well, I’ve been eating, way better food too, and still, the weight is slowly slipping off me. I’m wearing my “skinny” pants now, which are still pretty big, and now they’re starting to fall off too. Someone even told me I had baggy clown pants, since my butt is getting smaller and smaller.

It’s so weird, just when I was starting to be comfortable being fat, now I’m losing weight. Pour quoi?

It could be because I’m eating less junk food. It could be because I’m smoking next to nil pot, and hence having less munchies. It could be because I have a job that entails moving around. Who can say? All this, and I still haven’t signed up to be a member of the Y yet, which is on my list of things to do.

Two of the most important things for a wee bipolar person like myself to do is to eat healthy and get lots of exercise. Finally I’m in a financial position where I can actually realize those things. Sure, exercise is sort of free, but to actually have some spare cash to get a subsidized membership to the Y and access to their gym and swimming pool is kind of amazing.

Next week I get my first Good Food Box of Organic veggies and fruits. PLUS I have been drinking this really yummy protein shake my mother showed me how to make.

The recipe is as follows:
Add 1 quarter of soft tofu to 8 ounces of orange juice (or other juice if you prefer, I’ve been using Pineapple & Orange Fruit and Veggie juice). Blend with a hand blender. Then add in five frozen strawberries, chopped up a little bit, and blend that in too. Next add two heaping tablespoons of frozen blueberries and blend again. Next, add one tablespoon of golden flax (or regular, but golden looks nicer). Stir and drink!

Don’t go all hardcore and live on JUST that drink, but as a breakfast substitute it’s pretty decent and healthy.

Yes, maybe I am finally winning the battle of medication side effects. I felt pretty betrayed by such a drastic weight gain happening all because of meds that I need to be stable. Not to downgrade the Sexy Fat Girl movement, because fat is sexy. I guess, I just missed being able to go into a store and find things that fit me.

Of course, the flip side of this is that the last time I lost weight, I went into full on mania. A strangely common side effect of mania is that we all look so svelt. Then again, I don’t feel manic, my sleeping patterns are fine, and while work has it’s own stresses, it’s not as stressful as the situation I was in when I flipped out (ratty apartment with nothing, not having a bed, living with someone’s abusive boyfriend, living in Montreal and not speaking any french, blah blah blah.)

Oh yeeeeeah! I am a GOD!

This morning I turned on my computer, only to see it do something completely heinous and evil like NOT RESPOND AT ALL!!

I shouldn’t say not respond at all, the power light came on, only to go into epileptic fits of blinking madness. And then the fan went into overdrive. EEEK!

I checked some stuff quickly online, then went through my terribly slim manual that came with the thing. Then I decided it probably had to do with the RAM, due to the blinking lights, then went into the guts of my computer, took out both RAM cards, and then reinstalled them.

It was a little nerve racking, being so involved with the guts of what is a pretty crucial part of my life. So many ways to fuck up. But it worked! The computer’s back up and running and I didn’t have to take it down to some repair place and spend my pay cheque.

There is one thing I noticed though, which is that the inside is awfully dusty, I’ll have to get a can of compressed air and do some tech-y dusting.

I feel like a god. There is nothing like knowing you can conquer technological problems. I think that’s why I love my job. It’s sometimes like doing a really abstract puzzle.

Anyway, I think I’m going to try and install Linux on one of my partitions. We’ll see how it goes.

Three years have passed

It’s been three years since I stepped out of the hospital to freedom. I had no money, so it wasn’t long before I was back as work, still crippled by my experience.

The hospital. It’s such a bland sounding word, nothing near the sheer horror of really being there. I mean, really being there. I remember confusion, and an overwhelming sadness. I’d wanted to kill myself before, but there, I was really ready to do it. I didn’t know if I would ever get out, there was a lot of talk about behaviour, being good, as if having a psychotic episode automatically makes one the opposite of good, which is evil. I remember not knowing what was expected of me. For most of my stay, I made my bed every morning.

I have never made my bed before or since.

But there was this thing, about being normal. About not having religious thoughts. Who decides what is normal? Who makes up these standards?

I remember nurses talking down to me like I was a child, and how much I resented that.

I remember being forced to capitulate to the psychiatric health care system, and how much I resented the people who put me there.

I remember abuse, being put in restraints twice, for hours at a time. I remember bruises from the orderlies, and being screamed at for no good reason at all.

There is still an overwhelming sadness about the experience, about being degraded solely for having a mental illness. About being treated as a disgusting subhuman, and being blamed for things I could not control, and some things I had nothing to do with. Once an alarm went off on it’s own and I remember an orderly coming into the room where I was sleeping and screaming at me that I had something to do with it, it was my fault. As though I was such a powerful crazy person that I could do things in my sleep.

I remember it was the first time in years that I got to eat three meals a day, instead of the one meal I had been subsisting on for ages.

I remember the loneliness, alienation.

It changes you. Once you’ve been hospitalized, once you’ve gone to that dark place, people look at you differently. People are scared of you. People try to control you afterwards. People assume you are a broken human.

As time passes, I find that the people I trust the most have been hospitalized too. It’s an experience that almost becomes an identity, because you know that the only safety is with others who you can turn to who have been there too.

Three years have passed, and it still makes me cry. I guess I should celebrate the fact that I haven’t been back since. But sometimes, I just feel frustrated that so much happened to me there and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I know someone who was sexually assaulted when she was in the hospital. But no one believed her, because she was crazy.

Recently a bus driver taking some patients to another hospital stopped for a drink. When he got back, all the patients had escaped. So he picked up some people and offered them a free ride, what he didn’t tell them was that it was to the hospital.

It took them three days to convince the staff that they weren’t patients.

It could happen to you, even if you are sane.